Life and Career Skills

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"Life is like a coin.  You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once."

-Lillian Dickson

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Stop Being Busy

“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” ~Lao Tzu


Stop being busy and your job is half done.

Think about how busy we are, and how it has become a way of bragging: I’m so busy, I must be important.


“I have a million things to do! I never have time for anything! I can’t slow down — I’m too busy.” This is thought to be a good thing in a society where we must be productive, active, occupied.

But it’s a fool’s game. Busy is simply noise, action without meaning, lots of little unimportant things rather than a few important ones.

Stop being busy. Just decide to stop, today.

Now you’re halfway done. You’ve decided to slow down, and to focus on what’s important. All of a sudden, your schedule clears up, and your to-to list shrinks down to almost nothing.
Now you just have one or two things to do, instead of a million. You clear distractions, and focus.

But how can you stop being busy? It’s a simple change of mindset: you say, I’m not going to be busy anymore. Even if you have little control over your schedule, you can decide that you’ll slow down, and pick the important things to work on, and if necessary, talk to your boss about doing this. If you control your schedule, you can drop all the busywork, and just pick the high-impact tasks.

It might seem impossible, but once you decide to put an End to Busy, you have taken the biggest step.

You can now make time for work you’re passionate about, for work that matters. You can make time for solitude, for creating. You can make time for contemplation, for yourself.

Stop being busy, and your job is half done.

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” ~Jane Austen

 

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 June 2010 03:13 )
 

Kindness

“Do every act of your life as if it were your last.” ~Marcus Aurelius

There’s something so powerfully simple, profoundly beautiful, about the Dalai Lama’s quote: “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

It’s a philosophy I’ve been exploring for awhile, and though I don’t claim to have even come close to mastering it, it turns out this is a single word that can become the central tenet of your life, if you let it: “kindness”.

Kindness can guide every interaction you have with others, can guide your life’s work, can give meaning to your life, can even guide your eating, parenting, marriage, and more.

All else will melt away, if you let go of it, and leave only kindness.

 

Will Smith Life lessons

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How to Teach Your Children About Wealth Creation

Treat the supermarket as a school. Give your kids a grocery cart, a list, and $30, and see how far they can make their money stretch. Send them searching the aisles for goods that you have cents-off coupons for. Ask them to pick the best buys.
Don't lie to your kids.
Make a clear distinction between what you can't afford and what you don't think is worth paying for. If they still want it, let them save for it. If it violates your principles, just say no.

By their midteens, start giving your kids a sense of what life is like by having them pay the family bills for two or three months. Sit down together with the bills and show them how to write checks to pay for the family's utilities, mortgage, rent, phone, water and credit cards. They'll find it instructive to see how fast the bank balance drops. They'll also start getting a better idea of how much it costs to live.
Don't shell out for practically everything your kids want or need. That teaches them nothing except dependency, not to mention the fine art of coaxing.They need to make choices within budget limits to learn adult skills. If they want more than their allowance can buy, they should find a part-time job. Children will spend unlimited amounts of their parents' money, given a chance. They are much more careful with their own.

Use cash. Don't put kids under 16 on your credit cards as authorized users or provide them with prepaid debit cards. They need to learn how to allocate real dollars before they can transfer those skills to plastic. Consider plastic after age 16, to introduce them to credit while their spending is still under your supervision.

Last Updated ( Sunday, 02 May 2010 14:42 )
 

Black and White Thinking

People who tend to see the world only in terms of extremes are more prone to severe depression, marital conflict, anxiety and host of other everyday problems. But when you learn to recognize the spectrum of gray in the difficult experiences you encounter in your life, you will be better equipped to come out on top.

"Always" and "never," polar opposite words, tend to characterize the vocabulary of black and white thinkers. Black and white thinking means seeing the world only in terms of extremes.

If things aren't "perfect," then they must be "horrible." If your child isn't "brilliant" then he must be "stupid." If you're not "fascinating" then you must be "boring."

Yikes! What a tough way to live! In real-life, situations are almost always shades of gray, not black or white. Falling victim to black and white thinking tends to exacerbate depression, marital conflict, anxiety, and a host of other everyday problems. Give yourself and the ones you love a break and discover the beauty of shades of gray

Last Updated ( Sunday, 02 May 2010 14:40 )
 
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